Summer Book (New York Review Books Classics)

by Tove Jansson

[nannah]

“On the one hand, you could say nothing happens, there is no plot, and on the other hand that everything in the book is driven by a single event, so fleetly mentioned as to be almost occult: ‘Sophia woke up and remembered that they had come back to the island and that she had a bed to herself because her mother was dead.’”
Kathryn Davis

What a lovely little book! I’m so glad I read this before summer was truly over; it truly captures summer’s feelings and little adventures. Sophia, her grandmother, and her father stay on a tiny island in a gulf of Finland for the summer. The book mostly explores the relationship between Sophia and her grandmother: their warm love, their fights, and everything in between that can occur when in a rather isolated place. Like Kathryn Davis said in the introduction, it could be argued that nothing actually happens, but so much is said, too.

I think I’ll be reading this over again many times on warm summer nights -- especially as I get older.